Corporate Crime and Punishment: The Crisis of Underenforcement

A study and analysis of lack of enforcement against criminal actions in corporate America and what can be done to fix it.

In the early 2000s, federal enforcement efforts sent white collar criminals at Enron and WorldCom to prison. But since the 2008 financial collapse, this famously hasn’t happened. Corporations have been permitted to enter into deferred prosecution agreements and avoid criminal convictions, in part due to a mistaken assumption that leniency would encourage cooperation and b...